Neolithic Civilization of Europe: Vinča 5700–4500 BCE (Old Europe)

• published: 18 Oct 2015
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http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/serbiavinca.htm In 1908, the largest prehistoric Neolithic settlement in Europe was discovered in the village of Vinca, just a few miles from the Serbian capital Belgrade, on the shores of the Danube. Vinca was excavated between 1918 and 1934 and was revealed as a civilisation in its own right. Indeed, as early as the 6th millennium BC, three millennia before Dynastic Egypt, the Vinca culture was already a fully fledged civilisation. A typical town consisted of houses with complex architectural layouts and several rooms, built of wood that was covered in mud. The houses sat along streets, thus making Vinca the first urban settlement in Europe, but being far older than the cities of Mesopotamia and Egypt. And the town of Vinca itself was just one of several metropolises, with others at Divostin, Potporanj, Selevac, Plocnik and Predionica. Archaeologists concluded that “in the 5th and early 4th millennia BC, just before its demise in east-central Europe, 'Old Europeans' had towns with a considerable concentration of population, temples several stories high, a sacred script, spacious houses of four or five rooms, professional ceramicists, weavers, copper and gold metallurgists, and other artisans producing a range of sophisticated goods. A flourishing network of trade routes existed that circulated items such as obsidian, shells, marble, copper, and salt over hundreds of kilometres.” The Vinca culture flourished from 5,500 (2) to 3,500 BC (4) on the territories of what is now Bosnia, Serbia, Romania and Macedonia. It got its name from the present-day village of Vinca, 10 km east of Belgrade on the Danube river, where over 150 Vinca settlements have been determined. There is no evidence of war or defences in the townships, and it appears that the Vinca were a peaceful society combining low-level agriculture with foraging and trade. They produced the first known European examples of a 'proto'-script and were the first people in the world known to smelt copper. They existed in a similar state for almost 2,000 years, following which they appear to have dispersed around the Mediterranean and Aegean. Vinča settlements were considerably larger than any other contemporary European culture, in some instances surpassing the cities of the Aegean and early Near Eastern Bronze Age a millennium later. The largest sites, some more than 300,000 square metres may have been home to up to 2,500 people. (2) We are told that they lived in spacious housing and separated their dead in nearby necropolis. They had workshops, which means skilled labour. They worked with several styles of pottery and had their own particular artistic fingerprint which is seen in both early Cretan and Sumerian cultures, which rose following the demise of the 'Old Europe' heartland. The First European Metallurgists: Copper working had been in progress in nearby Anatolia (Turkey), for well over 1,000 years before it appeared in Europe (5). One of the most exciting finds for archaeologists therefore, was the discovery of a sophisticated metal workshop with a furnace and tools including a copper chisel and a two-headed hammer and axe. "This might prove that the Copper Age started in Europe at least 500 years earlier than we thought,". The Copper Age marks the first stage of humans' use of metal, with copper tools used alongside older stone implements. It is thought to have started around the 4th millennium BC in south-east Europe, and earlier in the Middle East. The First European Writing: Various styles of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figurines are hallmarks of the culture, as are the Vinča symbols, which some conjecture to be an early form of proto-writing The tablets, dated to around 5,300 BC , bear incised symbols - the Vinča symbols - and have been the subject of considerable controversy among archaeologists, some of whom claim that the symbols represent the earliest known form of writing in the world. subsequent radiocarbon dating on the Tărtăria finds pushed the date of the tablets (and therefore of the whole Vinča culture) much further back, to as long ago as 5,500 BC, the time of the early Eridu phase of the Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia. This finding has reversed our concept of the origin of writing, and it is now believed that the Sumerians inherited a Vinca tradition of 'magical' or 'meaningful' scripture, probably following the collapse of the Vinca homeland c. 3,500 BC......... http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/serbiavinca.htm